The voice of God and the voice of the State: The ambivalence of obedience

Abstract

When the government in South Africa announced restrictions on the number of people that could meet in the wake of COVID-19, churches started implementing those measures in order to comply. This happened during the build-up to Easter celebrations. Even over the radio, Christians started to pronounce measures that would address such restrictions during Easter celebrations. Those pronouncements carried with them insinuations on how even the government should not encroach on the churches’ mandate to hold these celebrations. As it turned out, the restrictions were short-lived as they were immediately followed by lockdown. The rhetoric of criticising the government’s encroachment to the territory that belonged to the church was replaced by silent obedience. Faceless meetings erupted as congregants were organised into virtual groups complete with leaders and followers. At the same time, the criticism that had been placed on congregants who attended church on television ceased as many graduated from that tendency into attending church on their mobile phones. But this came with mixed responses as not all congregants had the necessary internet connectivity. This paper interrogates the tension between obeying the voice of God and the voice of the State. This is looked through two congregations: one in the ultra-urban uMhlanga area in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal Province and the other in the town of Empangeni in KwaZulu-Natal. The methodology employed in the paper is ethnography where the two churches are presented in the tradition of ethnographic thick description.